


macaron

by misslonelyhearts



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, PTSD, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-07
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 18:41:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1754375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misslonelyhearts/pseuds/misslonelyhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>i'm not actually in the CA fandom at all.  this was a gift for a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	macaron

It’s sixteen blocks to the tower, ten since they saw the giant A emerge from between skyscrapers and billboards, and Steve checks the traffic for a free cab.  He can make sixteen without blinking, but Bucky can’t.    
  
The sun melts down onto everything, the city’s warm and loose, but Bucky has been going tight the longer they walk.  He lags.  People brush past him and Steve watches how his limbs tense like a snake with no recourse, no rock to escape under.  
  
Next time they won’t go so far.  Maybe he needs to, but. . . Bucky isn’t next to him anymore, just slightly behind, letting Steve be a bulwark against teenagers with headphones and women with oversized handbags.  
  
“I’ll get a cab,” he says.  Three go by, and he wonders how big he has to be, how many laboratories he has to be birthed from, before he can get a damn cab on the first try.  
  
Bucky keeps his hands in his pockets.  Black shirt, gray slacks, boots.  The whole block is an oven and Steve’s sweating through his t-shirt.  If Bucky’s sweating too, Steve can’t tell, even though his hair’s pulled back.  He’s about to try whistling, two fingers creeping toward the corners of his mouth, when he notices Bucky is gone.  
  
He turns around to see a dark figure on the other side of the pedestrian traffic, safe in the shadow of a pastry shop.  The pink and white awning across the top has a name on it, the kind of place that spells it ‘shoppe’.  Framed in the window below it, Bucky inspects the tissue-trimmed and doilied delicacies.  
  
Steve crosses the languorous river of people to stand next to him.  
  
“Hey, you hungry?  
  
Bucky shakes his head no.   
  
The shape of him in the glass is so dark that Steve can see every pastry clearly, despite the sunny street reflections.  Bucky takes his hand out of his pocket to point, barely touching the window, at a box of cookies.  They’re packed neatly, uniform and perfect, small and round and colorful.  
  
Steve looks for a tag or a placard, but there isn’t any.  
  
“They’re French, I think, or they certainly look fancy that way.”   
  
“In the box, side by side they. . .they look like,” Bucky says and doesn’t say, and his hand goes back in its pocket.  Steve nods and doesn’t touch his best friend.  
  
“Yeah.  They sorta do.”    
  
Packed in like that, side by side. Children, soldiers, bullets.  Things you never get back once you send them out.    
  
“Pretty, though, don’t you think?”  Steve cups a hand against the glass. “With all that sugar.  And they seem . . .light.”  
  
“Pastel’s not my color,” says Bucky.  In the window’s reflection, dark but unmarred, Steve watches Bucky _smirk_.  It’s a shot of old whisky in a strange new glass.  Sam would be proud of those four words, that smile.  He’d probably take credit, and Steve would let him.    
  
On the street, a cab angles hard to the curb, depositing a fare.  Steve reaches for the shop door.   
  
“Well, let’s just see about that, c’mon.”  
  
Bucky nods yes.  
  
Cool air washes over them both -‘refrigerated air’ they used to call it- along with the unmistakable smell of almond.  Bucky doesn’t flinch at the bell, just glides on inside ahead of Steve, into the cloud of sweetness that just about everyone remembers from somewhere good.


End file.
